'So the Church throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace,
being edified; and, walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort
of the Holy Ghost, was multiplied.'--ACTS ix. 31 (R.V.).
A man climbing a hill stops every now and then to take breath and look
about him; and in the earlier part of this Book of the Acts of the
Apostles there are a number of such landing-places where the writer
suspends the course of his narrative, in order to give a general notion
of the condition of the Church at the moment. We have in this verse one
of the shortest, but perhaps the most significant, of these
resting-places. The original and proper reading, instead of 'the
Churches,' as our Version has it, reads 'the Church' as a whole--the
whole body of believers in the three districts named--Judaea, Galilee,
and Samaria--being in the same circumstances and passing through like
experiences. The several small communities of disciples formed a whole.
They were 'churches' individually; they were collectively 'the Church.'
Christ's order of expansion, given in chapter i., had been thus far
followed, and the sequence here sums up the progress which the Acts has
thus far recorded. Galilee had been the cradle of the Church, but the
onward march of the Gospel had begun at Jerusalem. Before Luke goes on
to tell how the last part of our Lord's programme--'to the uttermost
parts of the earth'--began to be carried into execution by the
conversion of Cornelius, he gives us this bird's-eye view. To its
significant items I desire to draw your attention now.
There are three of them: outward rest, inward progress, outward
increase.